Welcome back to Stand Out! In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the art of content generation with one of the fastest authors at Monogram Publishers, Ellie Luther. She has been published twice in less than two years, writing two long-form books on Italian wine and becoming an automatic authority in that niche, which is an amazing achievement!
She has been a consultant in the sustainability space for years, and she leads the content strategy for global agriculture alliances, so she knows exactly what it takes to create content that speaks to a specific industry and amplifies reach.
Ellie is joining us to share her journey and share some tips because I know that one of the biggest blockers people have when faced with the prospect of writing a book is that it feels daunting and overwhelming.
And Ellie will be able to simplify this process, so by the end of this podcast, you will feel super excited and empowered to get started on this journey yourself.
Welcome to standout for entrepreneurs and small businesses who want to stand out in their industry and grow their business I am Diana from monogram publishers. co.uk and in this show we’ll explore how to increase Authority toine your unique value proposition and create products and services your audience will
Love welcome back to standout in today’s episode we’re diving deep into the art of content generation with one of the fastest authors and monogram Publishers Ellie Luther she has been published twice in less than two years writing two long form books on Italian wine and becoming an automatic Authority in that
Niche which is an amazing achievement she has been a consultant in the sustainability space for years and she leads the content strategy for Global agriculture alliances so she knows exactly what it takes to create content that speaks to a specific industry and amplifies reach Ellie is joining us to
Share her journey and share some tips because I know that one of the biggest blockers people have when faced with a prospect of writing a book is that it feels daunting and overwhelming and Ellie will be able to simplify this process so by the end of this podcast
You will feel super excited and empowered to get started on this journey yourself thank you Ellie so much for being here with us today hi Diana you’re so welcome it’s really really lovely to be here and obviously for me really special to talk talk to my passion project rather than my day-to-day work
So really lovely to be here amazing Ellie so I would love to start by talking about maybe the books you’ve written and maybe giving us a bit of an overview about them yeah of course so as you kindly mentioned I have launched into the world of Italian wine which for
Me is totally as I said a passion project it’s not linked at all to my day job as it were so I have published two books with your help as you know but for the audience’s sake first of first of which is the Italian wine connoisseur
And the second book my most recent one which has recently been published yay thanks for your help is the ultimate Italian wine tour pocket guide so what inspired me to write that book obviously it was the second in a journey in a series that I plan to continue which is
Really unpacking that Italian world of wine and the niche that you helped me to find and build on so for me it was an obvious next step I really dug deeper into the world of wine experiences and tools available in the places that I had
Referred to in the first book so I think for those of you thinking of a series or of an obvious like next step to a to a book you kind of think about what makes sense chronologically or what makes sense to tell that part of the story
Next so it’s been a really great process for me and certainly eased by Diana’s amazing help and the team there and I think as she mentioned I hope I hope I can definitely make you feel less scared about the prospect of doing so because if I can publish a book then anyone
Really can brilliant Ellie thank you so much um and I’m really curious about your writing process I’d love to know how do you approach this process and what does a typical writing day look like for you okay sure um I would say and I think I’m talking to the audience
Here who will feel the same it’s not as if I’m right in birday commer so I don’t have a day planned out that for me I think of myself as a writer I had to orchestrate a day to give myself that time so thankfully I work freelance so
That’s a very if you’re in that fortunate position that’s a very good place to be because you know you’re the master of your own time so the only thing it takes is discipline to put aside your blocks of time for your actual work and then your blocks of time
For writing and I think if you’ve got that gift of being freelance it’s very easy to say okay this morning I’ll do my day job or do my freelance work and in the afternoon I’ll put pens down and I will just concentrate on this specifically so that was important for
Me to have blocks of time I think the flexibility of knowing I could do it in the evening or when I’m feeling more creative was a huge huge help and I think not getting blockers in terms of research knowing what you want want to then sit down and write about is key so
Do the research first and then know that you really can sit down and Hammer out two or three hours of writing brilliant that’s super interesting and you mentioned also something that um I would love to expand more on which is sort of when you’re more creative I know a lot
Of people might say you know what I’m a night owl my creative time is literally in the middle of the night what was that like for you it was exactly that it was rolling with that flow of what felt right because I didn’t have a deadline as such you know when you’re
Self-publishing you don’t have an agent or a publisher saying to you oh my God you need to get this done and the process is brand new to you so I think knowing that you have the freedom to do this because it’s a goal you want to achieve is actually more empowering I
Really wanted to do this if anything I found it hard to be as dedicated to my day job because I wanted to be writing this book and if you’re doing this because it’s something that you have always had a passion for and not known how to Branch out and really own it or
If it’s a side hustle that you want to become your primary business I think it’s going to feel really right and you’re going to want to get your teeth into writing about it um I would say in terms of being a night ow or being a morning person use those windows when
You can I think make the most of when those creative juices are flowing if you’re lying in at night thinking oh I’d love to write a really cool chapter right now literally get up and do it because this book isn’t going to write itself you’re probably working around
Other commitments and other jobs and other things you have to do in the day so Go With It Go with a really flexible routine of when your creative juices are flowing punch out all you can that’s that’s super interesting and and actually I suppose you you’re quite
Unique as well kind of having the pleasure of seeing how you work I can almost tell that you really have a grasp of flow and you really know when you sit down and you start working and writing it just seems to flow very naturally and
I do know that a lot of people really struggle with writer’s blog so I wonder how you keep your creativity flowing in in a way that really seems almost natural I think that piece about being natural is really important if you’re going to write a book and own a niche
Whether that’s a business interest or a personal Venture I don’t think you can pretend to be something you’re not and if you’re going to sell and if you’re going to do well and if you are going to own that Niche it’s going to be because it’s genuine and there’s no one else out
There who is you so that is the niche in itself use your personality use the flow of what comes to you and I’m assuming I’m talking to people who are all writing non-fiction here so they’re owning a business empor or a passion project in which case use that authentic
Tone of voice because you can smell it a mile off if someone isn’t being creative and that will mean you don’t get those blockers because actually what comes to your head what comes to you that you want to write is what you should go with
Yeah and that’s really uh what a quite a lovely thing uh that I’ve noticed in in your in your work in your books is that you you have a very unique voice that really comes through your books um and you mentioned this sort of idea of using
Your voice and being quite authentic do you have any tips about how somebody can maintain that flow of ideas whilst keeping true to that authentic voice when when your writing yeah of course I mean as you know um working together I guess you did get a real sense for me
Still wanting to be kind of funny and silly and not stuffy and that is the tone that I have gone for with I love Italy so you’ll see that it’s created for Millennials for 30 something who are just branching out into a slightly more complex and more sophisticated wine
World so for me that is reflected exactly in the AG iMat the the space in my life I am at so I didn’t need to venture too far from the truth I’d say in the cases that if you’re writing about something you really do know about it shouldn’t be swaying too far from
Your truth so if you’re a really empowered owner of a business and you’re really Keen to start writing about that that is something you’re going to know really well so I would say you shouldn’t be swaying too far from the truth in the first place so that authentic tone of
Voice will come really really genuinely but for me thankfully it was funny it was light it was colloquial it was easy for me to go to write with that tone of voice that suggested look I’m not an expert any more than you are let’s do this journey together so for me it was
It was definitely the tone of voice I felt comfortable with that I felt like I could own because it was true and that’s also quite an interesting approach to writing a specialty book in a niche that obviously has um traditionally been quite stuffy and quite complex and in so
Many ways you’ve been able to democratize access to wine and wine knowledge in a super fun way and I I suppose that also Al comes from understanding your audience and what they actually need from you at that stage can you tell us a little bit more
About you know how you were able to sort of find that the audience needed this tone of voice to be able to really enjoy wine once again yeah so I think doing some sort of it doesn’t have to be formalized market research but when I say market research knowing your
Audience and knowing who you’re writing for there’s no writing style or no book that is going to appeal to every one so you’re better off knowing who you are targeting and being really good at that so my market research in vertic Commerce was my set of friends who we all go to a
Dinner party and we take a bottle of wine that’s £12 because we assume that’s better than the 7 pound bottles thinking we’ve done our bit in terms of you know going a bit more sophisticated so I knew there was a gap there because even if I’m looking at my friendship group and
My immediate peers there would be a gap there to know more about wines and to have something telling you where do I go to learn about it how do I know which ones are actually quality how do I understand an appellation system all those things
That if I base it on what me and my friends know people don’t yet know it so there’s an obvious Gap there but I would just say your market research however formal or informal is going to be vital because you will have one audience sector that need your work and that you
Should be speaking to directly that’s brilliant Sy thank you so much and um yes obviously at monogram we create this service and we worked very closely with you to understand that audience to understand the needs of of this particular uh Market that you wanted to
Speak to yeah so we did a lot of work together didn’t we and I think you were really listening to me and really taking that on board and I think you creating that customer avatar for me which is something I never would have known how to do or the importance of having that
Available meant I literally had a character to put a name in a face to that represented my audience and you know explained what I needed that to look like and it was basically a clone of myself and my mates which was really really invaluable and a great skill that
Monogram offered that yeah I wouldn’t have known where where to start with that you know and it’s really interesting a lot of entrepreneurs uh create businesses based on their own needs so ultimately the audience can be yourself uh and in this case I guess that’s really made it quite easy for us
To work together as well because you knew so much about the pain points of that audience in terms of Italian wine because you were experiencing them yourself so that was a really really lovely process so in terms of of fears I I do know and we do get feedback about
Uh the fear of actually writing a book you know thinking about what’s going to happen um in terms of the publishing process so I know that perhaps you had some concerns would you be able to tell us a little bit about how you were able to overcome these yeah of course and I
Don’t think there would be anyone out there who hasn’t written a book before published a book before who wouldn’t have some questions and some concerns and yeah worries about whether they can actually do this I would say from the very first time we spoke I just got all
Those questions off my shoulders about yeah but what if I go and print all these books then nobody buys it blah blah blah and I think those were my questions but actually once you understand self-publishing and that you you know you sell the book on demand so
It’s actually only when people order the book that you’re paying to print it and then getting the royalties from that that was part of the process that I then once I had answered was way less concerned about because if you think about it apart from the cost of having
Somebody nurture you through this process which is worth its weight and gold times 10 you don’t have any other outgoings because it’s your own work if you’re writing it if you’re not getting a ghost writer to do this for you which is also fine there’s not a huge spend
Going into it so you actually have very little to lose and I would say trying to have that approach to the whole journey you have everything to gain and very little to lose because once that book is sat on Amazon or whatever your platform is it’s probably going to sell itself
And if it doesn’t it’s probably because you haven’t marketed it in quite the right way for the Right audience so down the line in the foreverness that it’s going to be on there you’re probably going to do really well out of this so I’d say those concerns are right to be
Answered but then you will realize that there is there is everything to win here yeah and there’s something quite amazing about seeing your book for sale you know and people actually buying it because obviously you’ve had a really good reception to the books and people really love them um but also I’m interested
Because of course their success is incredible and very well deserved but I know that there have been certain uh people that perhaps you that have given reviews that haven’t been as positive and I think that’s also the nature of uh well doing anything that really is going
To be out there um but also it’s the fear that some people have that fear of judgment so I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that about certain perhaps criticism that you’ve received on the books and have you’ve been able to actually reframe
This in a in an empowering way yeah of course I mean I guess you and I have spoken a little bit about this and fortunately I guess for myself and and other things I’ve done in my life I tend not to take those too harshly and I take
It on the chin and I know you and I have laughed about that in that it’s a great thing for me because I’m not going to crry myself to sleep at night if there’s one bad review versus 20 good ones I guess a lot of us know now in a world of
Social media and things like that and we see that celebrities say things like like you know I got one horrible comment saying my baby’s ugly it’s like well you haven’t listened to 20,000 other lovely comments saying your baby’s beautiful that one’s gone in you have to not let
That be your story and like I said before about really owning your sector of the audience think of it as if it hasn’t pleased someone they’re probably not the Right audience for you so I have had a few comments about this book isn’t basically some of the content perhaps
Isn’t professional enough for someone or I got a fact wrong you know a percentage grape split to make a certain wine varietal I take that with a pinch of salt because that person probably is a connoisseur of wine knows far more about than me about the topic which is fine
There’s plenty of space out there for people to know more about you I wasn’t necessarily writing the book for a wine connoisseur of 48 years who has tried every wine under the sun I’m writing the book for 30s somethings who want to Branch out into more sophisticated wine
World so I take that with a pinch so it doesn’t make them a bad person but it equally doesn’t need to go into to your brain or your sphere and how you think about yourself and your wonderful achievement so thankfully for me I didn’t lose any sleep over it and on to
The next one amazing and and that’s such a a lovely and and and strong and and amazing attitude um really to have and I really hope that everybody can get a little bit of this energy through this podcast because Ellie is one of the people that are completely confident in
What she’s doing and when she’s not she just goes out there and tries things out which is an incredible Brave thing to do and also I mean this leads a little bit to this idea of the impostor syndrome and I think because you were also starting in a new Niche and although of
Course you’ve worked for years in the sustainability sector agricultural sector so you know a lot about sort of the overarching areas but Italian one per se was quite new for you well I guess it links to what we spoke about just then I I tend not to dwell on the
Things that aren’t going to help me and I guess thinking I’m not good enough for this I don’t know enough about about this wasn’t ever going to be constructive I would say my day job and the work I’ve done as a consultant for years in Food Systems and Global moments
And Agriculture and food alliances certainly didn’t feel to me like there was any real link to Italian wine this is definitely for me a passion project on the side there was the crossover that did exist was more marketing expertise or understanding how to talk to an audience but in terms of subject matter
It could be as distant to me as rock climbing so I definitely think of them as two totally separate subjects and I think overcoming the impostor syndrome for me Fair it comes fairly naturally and I’m I’m very lucky with that I would say have the confidence to write about
Something that you already know the niche is there so me and you did some great work around that and again that’s something I wouldn’t have got from just plucking this Niche on my own we sat down and talked about the things I’m interested in and your work on the
Analytics of where of niching down and finding where there’s enough of a niche that loads of people haven’t already written about it and and it’s not oversaturated was in valuable because I might have had wine as an overarching topic not necessarily Italian wine so I do think finding a niche with monogram
Really helped and then once I knew I had a niche I had the confidence to know that there wasn’t already a leader in that Niche so of course there’s space for me and just be confident with that and again what’s the worst that happens you’re not you haven’t lost anything by
Trying and you probably can get there by marketing social media and doing enough work after the fact that gets you there yeah yeah that’s that’s so true and in terms of um because you’ve sold quite a few books I mean when we say quite a few it’s it’s almost 3,000 books already in
In the space of uh two years so that’s amazing and can you share maybe some effective marketing strategies that have worked for you because I do know that also you are huge on on social media you love social media and that’s sort of where uh you’ve done a lot of your
Marketing efforts through can you share a little bit more about that yeah of course and I would say the work you do in marketing after the fact is equally as important because otherwise you will end up with a great product that you’ve worked really hard on live online for
Everyone there to see but they can’t see it um and it’s a really cruel irony so the work that you do afterwards when you think oh my god I’ve just worked so hard and I’m finally finished is just as important so I’d say for me a lot of the
Things I read about making sure that I’m targeting the right people who already interested in your Niche is really really valuable so Target the Facebook groups the groups out there on social media that already exist with your specific Topic in mind so there are groups out there already called I love
Italy wine I love Italian wine and holidays I love Florence I love Rome so for me that’s a captive audience of four or 5 thousand potentially on a Facebook group who already are interested in the topic you’ve written a book about so from there you can write to the admin of
Those pages or those groups and say look I really want to share something this isn’t a sales pitch in the way that you know people might dread it’s an opportunity for someone somebody to see something I’ve written about that they’re definitely going to be interested in so making the most of
Those groups I’d say being really active with new accounts the thing is you’re not going to sell to a load of people once you’ve done your own audience that you already maybe have on social media you’re kind of in a silo so you need to go beyond that you need to speak to
You’re in a bit of an echo chamber of your own friends and family so you need to go bigger than that you need to start befriending people on social media who are interested in those things or who are in the same industry they’re wh writers wine followers wine influencers
And then get one of them who already has way more followers than you to do one shout out in return for something that you might do for them so it’s just thinking in that collaborative mind and what I can do for someone else so that what they do for me is really beneficial
To a bigger audience brilliant and I hope you guys are taking notes here because Ellie in the space of five minutes has just shared an incredibly powerful marketing strategy so thank you so much for that um so you mentioned working of course we work together to
Develop this from idea up until you know publishing and Beyond so how has working with our Publishing Company helped you in your journey and what advice would you give to authors considering a publishing partner I would say it’s been completely invaluable for me I have
Found that if I hadn’t have had you and your team to kind of hold my hand in terms of confidence through the process I certainly would have found it hard to know where to start basically so those are initial conversations we had which I think you know I openly just had lots of
Questions every question Under the Sun and you painstakingly answered them set me up to then have the confidence to go ahead and do this and I think because you’re so great at kind of chunking into smaller digestive pieces of advice or or actions that I need to go away go away
And do before we meet the next time made it just more digestible for me we didn’t talk about in the beginning we weren’t talking I guess about you know the end product and when I’m on Amazon we would talk about okay NE by next time Meet
Ellie why don’t you tell me what your ideal customer looks like and what you see the book outliners potentially covering and then you’d go away and do the outline so I think that regular meeting Milestone and way of doing things for me was really really powerful
And yeah it felt I felt like somebody was holding my hand I felt like somebody saw me through this whole process as much as your friends and family are probably there for you they’re not going to hear about the day-to-day struggles of having a Blocker on chapter 3 or you
Know not hitting your word count that week or things like that so I would definitely say unless you’re a superstar self-publishing author already in which case you’re probably not listening to me you can’t you can’t beat having somebody like monogram to be on this journey with
You well thank you so much of course for us has been an incredible journey to to work with you so closely and to just really be able to help you from that initial Inception all the way to now uh which of course we continue to work together in in future projects that
You’ve got planned of course Ellie thank you so much for sharing all of these insights it’s absolutely fantastic to hear all of your journey you know the things you’ve learned and certainly to just get a little bit of that sense of fearlessness that really has come through the books themselves you know
Your ton of voice everything that you’ve done has had that Mark and it’s been a real pleasure to work with you um for everybody listening you can find Ellie’s books at Amazon these are the Italian wine coner a 7-Day guide to mastering Italian wine and the ultimate Italian
Wine tour pocket guide so if you’re planning an Italian Escapade and you love wine like Ellie and me definitely check out Ellie’s books and and follow me follow her on I love italy. wine at I love italy. wine across all social media channels Ellie thank you so much and
Hopefully you’ll come and chat to us again of course we will thank you so much for having me bye see you in the next one guys bye thanks for listening to standout our podcast can be found in all the podcast platforms and you can check out all the
Links and resources mentioned and catch up on all episodes at www.mm monogram publishers. co.uk
